The nineteenth-century chemist Humphry Davy presented the results of

The nineteenth-century chemist Humphry Davy presented the results of his early experiments in his "Essay on Heat and Light", a critique of all chemistry since Robert Boyle as well as a vision of a new chemistry that Davy hoped to found.


(A) a critique of all chemistry since Robert Boyle as well as a vision of a Correct

(B) a critique of all chemistry following Robert Boyle and also his envisioning of a X

“also his envisioning of a” is unnecessarily wordy

(C) a critique of all chemistry after Robert Boyle and envisioning as well X

“envisioning as well new chemistry” makes no sense

(D) critiquing all chemistry from Robert Boyle forward and also a vision of X

-“all chemistry from Robert Boyle forward…” makes absolutely zero sense
-the sentence also suggests that Davy critiqued his own vision of a chemistry that Davy himself hoped to found…nonsense

(E) critiquing all the chemistry done since Robert Boyle as well as his own envisioning of X

-the sentence suggests that Davy critiqued his own vision of a chemistry that Davy himself hoped to found…nonsense

I get the parallelism and all, but can an inanimate object act as a critique? Does the GMAT allow that?

The critique is referring to the essay...i.e. it is an appositive. It's not performing any action here.

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Vishalcv
Yes. A critique is a work of criticism or an evaluation. A person can be a critic, but only written or spoken words can constitute a critique.

I had a question

Shouldn't "a critique of all chemistry since Robert Boyle as well as a vision of a" be incorrect because we can't associate a time or period to a person?
GMATNinja
generis

critiquing wrong here, a critique modifies the essay itself - essay was a critique for something. This is the intended meaning of this sentence, so thats how D and E out . In B and C, the parallelsim is not right,hence A

Hello experts,

Do you think the usage of critiquing is correct in D and E?

I think it's incorrect because we use verbing for the following:

1. Cause and effect relationship
2. Modify the previous clause by providing additional information
3. Provides answer to "how?"

And "critiquing" isn't used for any of the 3 above.

Am I wrong?

Thank you in advance!

VeritasKarishma GMATNinja AndrewN AjiteshArun EducationAisle

I do think that a case can be made that the present participial phrase ("critiquing...") in D and E does reasonably qualify under #2 above Ashmit.

D and E would more appropriately be eliminated from parallelism perspective.

ERROR ANALYSIS -

as well as - parallelism marker - 'a critique' and 'a vision' are parallel

ANSWER CHOICE ANALYSIS -

A) CORRECT
B) Parallelism error
C) Parallelism error
D) Parallelism error
E) Parallelism error

Hi experts egmat, GMATNinja

I would like to know whether my approach is right.

Option A: A critique and a vision both refer to the essay and follow parallelism. Hence correct
Option B: critique ...following Robert Boyle, and here critique is the essay. It's illogical to say that critique followed someone. Plus "and" and "also" both are present causing redundancy.
Option C: a critique ...after Robert, leads to meaning error. And the "critique ....envisioning" shows as if critique is doing the action of envisioning. Hence wrong.
Option D: Redundancy error (and & also).
Option E: Meaning change: "as well as his own envisioning". As per this choice, it seems his refers to Davy, whereas the original statements just mentions a general term "vision".

Please help me eliminate the incorrect choices with the right reasons.

Thanks in advance

Hello thereisaFire,

I will be glad to help you with this one.



Yes, your reason to select this choice is correct indeed.




In this choice, the word "following" has been used to mean "after". For example, the decade following 2010. So, your analysis of "following" is not correct here. I personally never reject an answer choice for the usage of "and also". This choice is incorrect because the two supposedly parallel elements can be written in identical structure as we see in Choice A. Moreover, we must use the regular noun form of the verb rather than the verb-ing noun form of the verb. So, "his envisioning of..." is not good expression here.




You are correct about the meaning distortion issue here. However, "envisioning..." does not connect as a modifier with "a critique". These two entities are connected by "and". It means that they are meant to be parallel, but structurally they are not.





Once again, the supposedly parallel elements are not structurally parallel. In addition, I do say that the use of the comma + verb-ing action modifier "critiquing..." is incorrect because the modifier is meant to modify the preceding noun, NOT the preceding action. The use of the action modifier in place of a noun modifier distorts the meaning.



This choice repeats the errors of Choice D.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Hello everyone,
Initially, I got the meaning of the sentence as this:

The nineteenth-century chemist Humphry Davy presented the results of his early experiments in his "Essay on Heat and Light", a critique of all chemistry since Robert Boyle as well as a critique of a vision of a new chemistry that Davy hoped to found.

So, I didn't notice any parallelism error. I still don't understand why it cant be the intended meaning.

HI SALAKSHYA

Not an experts though, let me try to give my inputs.

Since "a critique" is referring to the "Essay on Heat and Light" and Davy's book won't critique his own vision (I highly doubt that he would write anything that doubts his own vision rather he will provide reasons to believe it), I think "a critique of a vision of a new chemistry that Davy hoped to found" would, therefore, intend to provide a different meaning, which is not the intended meaning of the original statement.

Hope that helps.

Interesting. First, if the author had intended to suggest that the essay were a critique of two separate things, he or she could have written that the essay was a "critique of all chemistry since Robert Boyle" and "of a new chemistry that Davy hoped to found."

thereisaFire hit it on the head: that version wouldn't make any sense. Why would Davy critique the very vision he was trying to create? More importantly, it's also not actually the construction we see in the sentence. Take another look:



The only logical way to interpret that construction is that the essay is two things: 1) a critique of chemistry and 2) a vision of a new chemistry.

It would have been entirely reasonable to think, "hm, this is less than ideal; there's one logical way to interpret this and one illogical way, so I don't love it." Just know that this interpretation wouldn't qualify as a concrete error, so you'd want to hang on it while you search for definitive problems in the other options. Fortunately, all the other answer choices are fatally flawed, so there's no need to agonize over that initial interpretation.

I hope that helps!

in oa, "since Robert" is not good. "since" need a point of time, but not a name. "since then" , "since 1970", or "since I learned gmat" are good and logical

but the OA dose not need to be perfect . we need to remember this point to choose a best but not perfect choice.

other choices suffer errors of parallelism and can be eliminated quickly

Thanks for responding, I agree that meaning wise this version is not smooth but yes, in my views, people may critique their own writings, thinkings or views

A had a great confusion in this question over "critique vs critiquing". I could not understand the intended meaning. Whether the question stem intends to add extra detail about the book or add extra detail on the task done by Humphry Davy.

1: From X to Y ==> usage of "from" in (D) is wrong . to add "from Robert Boyle forward" sounds non-sensical.
2: "done since time X" ==> (E) is wrong bcz 'since' has to refer to a time instant. A person's name can't be a time instant.

In B,C
"critique" and "envisioning" are not parallel.
==> B,C out
==> A is the answer

I still ve certain doubts.